1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the food art, and in particular to the preparation of a donut batter which can be frozen and subsequently reconstituted, without thawing, in a deep oil fryer. Still more specifically, the invention relates to the preparation of a frozen cake donut mix, including a leavening system, and processing steps which allow the unique dough to be formed, frozen, shipped, stored and reconstituted to form finished products having very desirable properties.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The prior art known to the present inventors is quite limited due to the fact that they believe themselves to be the first to be able to provide frozen batter cake donuts of the kind where reconstitution occurs without thawing.
Chemically leavened batters have been previously prepared for products such as muffins, cookies or brownies. In the past, however, these products used conventional formulas for the batters, and product preparation included allowing the batter to thaw, placing it in a pan and baking the dough in the same way as if it were fresh. Some unleavened systems, e.g. pie crusts, have been deep fried without thawing.
In the donut industry, yeast batters for raised donuts (as opposed to cake donuts) have been prepared. The formulations are totally distinct from those used in conventional cake donut mixes or the batters of the present invention. Like other frozen dough systems known to the present inventors, these yeast raised systems require thawing and proofing before frying, all of which can take 11/2 to 2 hours or more.
It would represent a significant advancement in the art to provide a cake donut batter which could be frozen and reconstituted, without thawing or proofing, by deep frying. Such products could be cooked on demand by simply removing from the freezer enough preformed donuts for the customer demand and cooking them. Advance preparation for peak demand periods and the space requirements for thawing and proofing dough products would be eliminated.